6-21-15: Beyond the Sea

I'm riding a scooter to Grandma's house (I think) and I figure out that if I move my hips in a particular fashion, I can maintain a high speed without having to push myself forward with my foot. On my way there I end up scootering through a store. While I'm looking for an exit, I end up in a loading area or warehouse-y back room where people come to drop off their garbage and dead bodies, Salvation-Army-style. There's garbage and several bodies lying on the floor of the warehouse and employees are making their way around the drop-offs, going through the unwanted things and examining the dead bodies, often by autopsy. (Again, these are polo-shirt-wearing store employees in a K-mart-like store.)

I stop to talk to this employee about dropping off a dead body that I apparently need to get rid of and casually, inwardly observe that the bodies that I can see on the ground and the ones already in the light-blue shrouds that the employees are using to contain them are mostly of a cinnamon-brown skin tone, which seems strange to me. The employee that I'm talking to (a black man) suddenly accuses me of being racist, which is startling because I have said nothing out loud nor was I aware that I was giving any sort of indication of disapproval or condescension. Defensively, I tell him that I was trying to ask him about body drop-off because I have a dead body of my own to bring in, thank you very much. A dead white body, because white people are not too good for the dead body warehouse place.

Anyway, while I'm hanging around in the warehouse this lady employee is doing a seriously invasive autopsy on a dead body - she has removed all of the skin from the front of his body, even from his face. I can see his ribs and lungs and the muscles in his face and the way that his nose is white cartilage. I notice that his lungs are red. All of sudden, the dead man takes a breath and starts speaking - asking questions, like "Where am I? What's going on?"

The employee stares at him, shocked and obviously totally unequipped for the sudden revival of one

of the bodies mid-autopsy. I'm thinking fast - if by some slim chance this guy is going to stay alive and not die before our eyes, he will have to stay calm. But he obviously has no idea that he's skinned and lying on the floor of a dead body warehouse and there is no good way to tell him that without creating a panic - what can anyone possibly say to distract him from the current predicament long enough for someone to sedate him and call an ambulance? He reaches up and touches his nose, obviously aware that something is wrong. All I know is that the employee will tell him the truth and he'll freak out and die again and I can't let that happen. I run over to where the alive-again guy is lying on one of those light blue shrouds and the employee is scrambling around and I watch his lungs inflate and deflate faster as he begins to panic.

All of a sudden, somebody starts to sing.

Somewhere... beyond the sea,
somewhere waiting for me...

I realize that I'm the one who's singing. I must have just started singing the first song that I thought of, which for some reason was "Beyond the Sea."

The weird thing is, it works. The formerly-dead guy puts his arm back down at his side and looks up at me. My instinct is to put a hand on his shoulder or cheek or something, but he has no skin so I just kneel down next to him and maintain eye contact and keep singing. He knows the song, too; I can see his mouth moving and hear his voice - barely more than a whisper - singing along with me. He has blue eyes. I keep my eyes locked on his so that he can't look away and see what's going on around us. I imagine us slow-dancing in a gazebo on the beach, our arms around each other, both of us smiling serenely and gazing into each others' eyes. (This is a variant of something that I do at work when handling an unhappy critter - I imagine that my serenity is a pool of water and it's slowly rippling outwards and spreading to the kitty cat in my arms. Sometimes it seems like it works, but I might just be imagining it.)

As EMTs come scrambling in with a stretcher, the not-dead guy closes his eyes slowly and they take him away.

Since I woke up this morning, "Beyond the Sea" has been stuck in my head.

New Pet

I had a dream the other night that I got a pet giraffe, only it was smaller than a real giraffe - it was like a Great Dane with a giraffe neck. I brought her home and she galloped through my house breaking things. I thought that it is a good thing I'm young and capable because she'd be hard to control otherwise. Then right after thinking that, my right hand fell off at the wrist, leaving an open wound and everything. 

I ended up getting a "hand transplant," although the first one didn't take (graft vs. host, I guess) but the second one resulted in a rather unresponsive hand being attached to my wrist. I couldn't do very much with it as far as fine motor skills, and for the rest of the dream I was extremely paranoid that if I over-exerted myself, the donor hand would tear off. 

While my giraffe was outside on the dock (no idea why there was a dock) there was a Halloween rave with black lights and glow sticks going on inside the building that I was in, which was now looking like it was the student center of a university. I was trying to find somebody, and was navigating the dark and wild rave with my transplanted hand tucked in my hoodie pocket. I finally found a hallway that had the fluorescent lights on, and was walking down it when I had to circumnavigate a posse of what turned out to be bodyguards, because for some reason Justin Beiber was standing there in the hallway in a really shiny metallic purple jacket. (He was a little bit Michael Jackson, too.) I was just going to continue walking because Justin Beiber had not been who I was looking for, but he stuck out his hand in greeting - presumably for a handshake - and I found myself in the awkward situation of either refusing his handshake or offering my left hand and then having to explain myself, both of which involved me spending more time than I had intended in the lighted hallway. I ended up offering my left hand, and he switched hands and said, "You're a lefty?" 

Which I am, so I said yes, but then explained that that's not why I don't shake hands with my right hand and pulled the sleeve of my hoodie up to expose the gnarly-looking scar tissue that went all the way around my right wrist where the donor hand and my arm (which were slightly different skin colors) had been connected. Justin Beiber nodded understandingly, as if hand transplants were fairly common and he recognized one by sight. Then I put my hand back in my pocket and left. 

When I got home (never having successfully found whatever I was looking for) there was the director of a dog rescue at my house with two dogs - a brown dog with a healing leg fracture and a white pit bull who had a pink nose and pink eyes. The pit bull was young and looked to be about as rowdy as the giraffe that I already had, but I said I would foster the two dogs even though I didn't think I could handle them all with only one functional hand. Luckily, when I brought my giraffe inside, she and the white pit bull instantly hit it off and went bounding around the house together, breaking things but ultimately keeping each other entertained while I sat on the dock with the brown dog, watching them tiredly.

Ostriches: the Silent Killers

I don't remember much of this dream anymore, but I do remember the gut-wrenching fear.

I was at work at the vet hospital and this guy comes in with his psychotic, two-headed ostrich and it got loose in the treatment area.

We were collectively trying to trap and restrain it, but none of us really knew how to deal with an ostrich. This horrifying image happened at least twice: I'm on the defensive, looking around me cautiously, and across the hospital I see another employee doing the same only as I'm watching, an ostrich head slowly rises up from behind a cabinet or something right next to them and they don't see it.

Pretty much take every horror movie scene where something is behind somebody and the audience sees it before the person does and insert an ostrich. It's seriously creepy.

The Incredible Sulk

July '13

I have the best dreams sometimes.

Here's the main plot, as it unraveled: Bruce Banner (or at least a Banner-like character) is mutated by gamma radiation and so becomes the Hulk when angry - the love of his life was also in the house and was exposed to the radiation as well. She turned out to be more tragic, though, because she had less control over her emotions and would become a monster at any intense emotion whatsoever. The love between her and Banner was too sad and strong - she had to stay far away from him if she was going to have any chance at controlling her "other guy." She ran with a sidekick, a superhero, who was strong enough to keep her in check when she lost control. He was a companion but never a love interest.

By chance, they both end up at the same show. She sees Banner first - immediately begins transformation out of intense joy, looks to her handler for permission to go embrace her love, which he reluctantly gives. Banner has at this point gained significant control over his Hulk alter-ego and upon seeing her running towards him and transforming, assumes Hulk form so that she can jump into his arms and they embrace, laughing, overjoyed, haven't seen each other in months. It was a Kodak moment. (Remember when "Kodak moment" was a colloquialism?)

Other details: my mom was on overbearing suicide watch, dad and I got stuck in a marching band routine, I tried to play the marimba but a black guy saved me from embarrassment by starting to actually play guitar. I got up to leave since he had given me an out, but was afraid that I would seem like I was leaving because he was black so I made sure to lovingly pat his kid's shoulder as I went past. 

Miscarriage

I'm at work and there's something urgent and horrifying happening around the dental table. I see Deanna, one of the technicians, she's scrubbed in and everything but is sobbing, which makes me think it isn't an animal that they're working on. There's a loud honking alarm going off that I've never heard before - it's obviously from a human hospital.

I see the face of a dying human infant on the table. It is pale and deformed, underdeveloped.

I know in my gut what is going on before anyone tells me, but I don't believe it until someone explains. Deanna miscarried her baby at work and Dr. Shanti is trying to save it. Despite her best efforts, it is crashing.

Suddenly, everyone around the table and mess of machinery cheers - they have a heartbeat from the baby. I'm amazed - the fact that a veterinarian could revive a premature human infant using only the resources available at the vet hospital was astounding. Dr. Shanti must have been the best of the doctors, since she was the one chosen to work on the child.

As this was going on, the other assistants and I were conflicted, cautiously continuing to go about our business as the catastrophe unfolded in the middle of the treatment area. Whenever an animal crashes or there's an emergency, it seems to be the thing to do to continue as if nothing is happening, staying out of the way being the best way any of us assistants can contribute. But on the other hand, this was different than business as usual - this was a human life, the child of one of our co-workers. Deanna was recently married and she and her husband have been trying to get pregnant - I hear her talking about it all the time.

The success does not last - it was unlikely that it would. They lose the baby again, and this time cannot revive it. The baby dies on the dental table.

I feel horribly uncomfortable, never quite knowing how to act around the grieving. I feel extra pressure, since Dr. John Krieger is there and he's quick to judge me for being anxious and timid. Dan is there, too, and we're in another room, but I don't know how to act so I just do my usual goofy stuff that I do with him and he plays along, although it's obvious that we're both uncomfortable and have no clue what to do.

Deanna is crying in treatment, nobody has been able to be of any help or comfort for her - she keeps shrugging away from anyone who tries to comfort her. I retreat to the back hallway so as not to have to watch her hysteria. To my surprise, Deanna walks out into the empty back hallway shortly after, having needed to escape the situation herself. I don't know how to act towards her, I don't want to be patronizing or too sympathetic, since she's being bombarded with that sentiment on all sides. I tend to prefer normalcy to sympathy myself. I greet her as I would normally, and she replies with equal casualness, her sobs subsided, a sense of numbness setting in. After a moment of agonizing, I wrap my arms around her in a bear hug, which is a risk I have decided to take, since historically I'm not good at dealing with the reaction to misguided attempts at comfort or comoraderie - I avoid these situations especially because in the past I have shed embarrassed tears over my bruised feelings after trying and failing to help someone who is upset. The shame of crying over something like that was the worst feeling.

Fortunately, Deanna finally accepted an embrace. She wrapped her arms around me, too, and I rubbed her back while we held onto each other.

I couldn't help but feel good that I had done something right when nobody else was able to do anything for Deanna - especially when Dr. Krieger walked past the two of us embracing.

Deanna decided she was going home even though her husband wasn't home from work yet. She put on her coat, but stalled instead of leaving, which made sense to me, because I'd rather stay and distract myself with work than sit alone at home with nothing to do but grieve. I was trying hard to make sure I didn't overstay my welcome comforting her.

She kept asking things like, "What do I do now?" and "Now what?" and "I don't know what I'm supposed to do." I knew that she was not asking for an answer about the mourning process, she was asking out of sad desperation how she could help her infant. I could hear the resignation in her voice, but I also knew that she hadn't accepted yet that the baby was dead and felt awful that I couldn't give her answers. At that point, when I was having to come up with things to say in answer to her questions or ways to step around them, I was getting uncomfortable and wanted to pass her off to someone else before she got sick of me and I started doing more harm than good.

I was leaving, too. I got in my car and Deanna got in hers and I began driving down to some specific destination. I remember that I needed to use the bathroom as soon as I got there, wherever I was going.

Unfortunately, on my way, traffic slowed to a stop and I pulled over to the side of the road with a handful of other drivers, seeing emergency vehicles and a road block. I got out of my car and went to try and see what was going on. Instead, I saw a middle-aged woman walk past the subject of the road block, look directly at it, and hurry past, her hand over her mouth in horror. I leaned far enough that I could see paramedics bent over a man who was slumped on the pavement, but not far enough to see the wounds that had nauseated the passing woman.

Tired from the trauma of the day at work, I decided to walk downtown and find somewhere to pee rather than staying to witness another tragedy. An older woman pointed me in the right direction. That was pretty much where it ended.

Three Stands Alone

It's either "I am Number Four" or "Buffy" or both, there are ten people and we're numbered 1-10 and I'm number 7 and the only two of us left trying to survive are 3 and 7. And the only way one of us can survive is by killing the other, but I don't know where 3 is and she knows where I am.

All of this played out like deja vu, I knew what was going to happen in this weird way.

Kevin came over to my house, we were chatting, he tells me he still has feelings for me. I say, I'll always love you, too, but we don't go together. Mine was more of a "Oh, well, you'll always have a special place in my heart, but..." I was thinking of Connor. Kevin got upset and said that I need to stop texting him and calling him (which I literally do maybe once every six months but I guess in the dream it was more frequent) because it was torturing him. I was sad because Kevin is a good friend, but reluctantly agreed. The problem remained that we were still in the same class, because apparently we were attending a college that was set up like an elementary school? I don't know. We were in the same class.

Then Kevin and I are in a Catholic church and everyone's getting up to take communion when it turns into a surreal, Tim Burton-esque scene after an elderly couple dies and then reappears as a pair of ghouls, and then we all swing danced with dead people. (Told you.)

Somehow I knew this was foreboding for me.

As we're filing back into our classroom, I identify No. 3, my to-be murderer, and see that she's holding a handgun in plain sight. Nobody else has noticed. I could run or try to hide, but something tells me that it's supposed to happen this way, so I just file in and take my place in the rows of students, directly in front of her.

It's not until she presses the gun to the back of my head that anyone else notices - everyone falls silent and 3 gives some monologous speech about being the victor and conquering me, et cetera. She's waiting, and I realize what she's waiting for - the students are still filing in and Kevin has not entered yet, and she wants him to watch.

The two rows of people in front of me are staring at me with horror and pity and it suddenly occurs to me that when 3 shoots me through the back of the head, the contents of my head are going to splatter all over them. I feel really bad because that will be traumatic and horrible, so I told them I was sorry in advance for splattering my brains on them, but I didn't say splattering my brains on them, I said I was sorry in advance and then trailed off and then mimed with my hands my brain contents being flung at them. I kind of tried to smile or laugh because I wanted to cheer them up, but my face disobeyed me and I ended up grimacing instead, like when you're going to cry even though you're trying really hard not to and your mouth just pulls down at the corners whether you want it to or not.

Then, Kevin walks through the doorway. 3 gives him just enough time to see us, then pulls the trigger and I'm dead.

The professor, a middle-aged woman, starts freaking out and trying to get to 3 to restrain her, but she knocks the teacher out. 3 started out asian, but now she's white with long light brown hair and she's wearing a sophisticated tweed dress and long gloves. Then she makes everyone give her money and promise not to identify her as the shooter or she'll get them, too, and now that she's the only one of the 10 who's alive so she's the victor, she has special slayer powers and everyone's terrified of her so they do everything she asks.

Foster-Baby-Elephant-Walrus-Russ

A baby elephant was admitted into the Sparky Fund and I was trying to get clearance to foster it. BECAUSE HOW AMAZING WOULD THAT BE? AN ELEPHANT? LIVING IN MY HOUSE? I could come up with so many puns for this.

I wanted him to have a really cool name so I could post a picture of me and him on Reddit and get a shit ton of karma, but some idiot in the Sparky Fund named him "Walrus" when I wasn't there.

This was horrifying to me and I spent a long time contemplating a solution before happening upon the incredible revelation that I can just refer to him as "Russ."

I spent the rest of the dream bargaining with my mother to try and get her to let me bring Russ home. I came up with several crazy ideas including a scenario in which I lived in the bathroom and slept in the bathtub and Russ got my whole room to himself.

A compromise was not reached before I woke up, but I did spend a good two minutes upon waking up still under the delusion that I was going to be bringing home an elephant.

This is Chang Yim, a baby elephant living in the Elephant Nature Park mentioned below.
I might nickname him Russ.

This was actually strangely coincidental. About a month later I got an email telling me that I was accepted into the Elephant Nature Park volunteer program for this summer, overseas in Thailand. Only two weeks, but  it's all I could afford through ISV. I'm excited on this strange level where I don't want to express it because I'm still not sure it's real, like I'm not really going to believe it's happening until I'm literally standing there touching an elephant. Like a weird sort of shock. This could be my future. This could be my foot-in-the-door of travelling, researching, and animal conservation. Or it could be two awesome weeks with elephants and that's it. I'm cool with either scenario. Here's the park in question, if anyone's interested in donating or just checking them out. You can read about all of the members of the herd and their stories - it's basically a giant elephant version of the Sparky Fund. Which you can also read about on the link below the elephant one. Both are great causes for amazing animals.

Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai, Thailand

The Sparky Fund

The Saddest Dream Ever

I had a dream that Adam Devine (of Workaholics) died.

It turned out to just be a rumor.

Which I found out while frolicking around on a dock with him and Blake, and Ders.

Which was really fun.

I'm glad he isn't dead.

Guy with face burned off

I'm playing a character

Character has adult gay dude friend

Gay dude friend gets in car accident, stumbles out of car, his pants are on fire but no one notices.

My character sees the fire and chooses to ignore it.

Another civilian is on fire, me and another guy immediately react to it with emergency procedures, thus proving that I was totally capable and willing to save a burning person but had consciously chosen not to with my gay friend.

After being left burning long enough, the fire spread very suddenly and completely engulfed my gay friend. He began screaming, people ran over from all directions, but he was burning and they couldn't stop it. I watched his skin burn off and he crumpled to the ground, his skeleton showing through his charred body. People were unsure what to do to help him, they had no fire blanket or water or extinguisher. Someone tried to support his head as he collapsed, engulfed in flames, but as soon as they touched his charred neck, his head fell off and thudded onto the ground. It was horribly disturbing.

Later on, I resumed my role and was suddenly swept upon by a cloaked villain, who was out for vengeance upon me.

The twist was pretty obvious, the cloaked villain eventually revealed a flash of his face, which was a strange, orange and red mask that was obviously covering some sort of deformity. I realized it was my gay friend I had allowed to burn to a crisp and die right in front of me. I kind of laughed sheepishly at the realization that my character was kind of screwed and also a jackass. Then me and everyone else around me got in order based on height.

I just purple myself

The 2nd installment of My Mom's Dream - we take our dog Chewy to strange new veterinarian, go to pick him up later and he's purple. Mom gets upset, asks what they did to him, they act like nothing's wrong and insist that he's fine.


The clear issue that my mom is struggling with here is the fact that a while ago, Chewy was attacked by a bullmastiff and had to have stitches and a drain tube in his neck. Since then he's been showing new signs of dog aggression and it's been very difficult for my mom.

See (not really very) graphic photos below of said injury.

Winners.

This was fairly recently - I was waking up in the morning and was somewhere between awake and asleep, and I dreamed that my brother was sitting on my bed next to me. He was wearing his red zip-up sweatshirt and jeans and his usual glasses, generally looking Joe-ish. We were watching an outtake reel from "Community" on my laptop and laughing our asses off. We were doing this thing that we used to do as kids where we rewound the same clip over and over again and watched it and laughed hysterically/obnoxiously every time.

I was really happy because it was a very nostalgic Grace-and-Joe moment. When I fully woke up, it was my cat that was actually sitting next to me.

Me, I'm just the lucky kind.

I'm at some sort of convention or arts camp or conference of some sort where there appear to be not only avid animal-lovers but also the majority of people there were young adult musicians. We were assigned hotel rooms based on the name of our pets rather than our own names. I’m rooming with Anna and we use Rosie’s name instead of Max (her dog) because it’s less common.

Performers play and sing at every meeting and meal, and at our opening gathering a stocky brunette starts playing “Things We Said Today” on guitar and singing. I really vividly remember him standing up a few feet away from me on the white tile floor with his acoustic guitar and playing those kind of low and fast notes that start the first phrase in that song - I'll probably post a video for clarification. (Pretty much the first thing you hear. He was a decent guitarist.)



He forgets the lyrics almost immediately. I’m sitting at a table to his right just observing, but I know the song so I start to sing along to help him out. He smiles at me gratefully and continues to occasionally forget his words but I know all of them and am confident when not in the spotlight so I keep singing along with him until the song is over. I worry that I was kind of annoying to everyone else but he thanks me sheepishly.

At that point I go upstairs to find my hotel room, which takes me forever. (And that's not specific to dreams.)

When I finally get to the room that says “Rosie” and then my name and Anna's name in smaller print underneath it. Instead of going into the room, I sit down just outside the door on the carpet; at first I’m not sure why, then I realize it’s because I’m suddenly holding a newborn infant. I seem to have found it on the floor. It’s a baby boy (named Ethan, but I know it's not EMS.) with a scrunched-up pink face and little pink hands. He’s wearing a dark green ones-y and a dark green knitted hat on his head, both with the a large white S (the Michigan State logo) on them. I remember feeling the weight of him in my hands very distinctly. I was supporting his head with one hand and his body with the other and he couldn’t have been more than seven or eight pounds. He was warm. I held him close to me instinctively, and as I did, my mom walked into the hallway. I started babbling, trying to pass off the fact that I was holding a baby (which was apparently somehow my baby) as some sort of silly circumstance, but as would happen in real life, I was actually being struck with deep fear and shame and very quickly stopped feeling maternal and wanted the baby to go away.

Grace ponders human mortality.

This dream is from about a week ago, before I had my hernia surgery. That may or may not have had something to do with the subject matter.

I was standing in a hospital hallway with my younger sister who was somehow also my twin. (And was also an accident, according to my mom.) She looked like a rather skeletal Mayim Bialik. We had just been brought to the hospital because we were both getting faint and having dizzy spells, and we had just found out that we both had a life-threatening pulmonary condition. I left the hospital with the strong sense that one of us was inevitably going to die.

We were at an indoor public pool later in the week when my sister suddenly collapsed. I caught her body and tried to stand her back up or support her but it looked like her head was lolling so far back that I couldn't see it. I shifted her around, trying to find her head so I could see her face, until I suddenly realized that her was no longer attached to her body. I looked around for her head while still clinging onto her body, and finally spotted it at the very bottom of the pool next to us. It was leaking a growing cloud of bright red blood into the pool water.

I started yelling for people to help us, astonished that they hadn't notice the decapitation taking place right next to them. At first no one heard me, and when someone finally did, they didn't take me seriously and just kind of casually walked over before finally realizing it was an emergency situation. It was obviously too late for my sister, her headless body was already dead in my arms, and there was nothing I or any of the others could do to save her.

It turns out she died because she had sex directly after eating. (We had weirdly specific physical and dietary restrictions due to our heart condition.) She was like thirteen years old and I'm a nineteen year-old virgin so I kind of said a little "thank you" to the gods and I'm pretty sure my mother did too because she was upset but not SUPER upset that the twin had died because as she told me very bluntly, my sister had been an accident and I had much more promise anyway. We took her body but left her head, hidden in the cloud of blood, at the bottom of the pool for someone else to retrieve and clean up because that would be too disturbing for us to do.

Later on I'm in a band or orchestra class, in a flute section with Jake and Irene. (The picture is an old photo and Irene and I at a real orchestra rehearsal.) At every rehearsal they would give each other a look, then get up to "go to the bathroom" at intervals so they could hang out in the hallway. I would occasionally participate, but on this instance I really had to use the bathroom (and it was either the same day or the day after my sister died so I kind of got a free pass) and I asked after Jake and Irene had both left, and the teacher said I could go but I had to text someone from the bathroom so she knew I was okay because she was afraid I'd be upset and suicidal.

On the way there I ran into the other two flutists and we strolled down the hallway a little ways, chatting and laughing which made me feel better. We passed Jake's locker which had a sign I had made for him with his name and big hemp glasses frames on the door, and next to it was his friend who had committed suicide's locker, which had lots of pictures and letters taped to it in his memory, and it made me awkward and quiet for a moment as we passed it. I woke up shortly after arriving in what I'm pretty sure was the girl's bathroom from my old middle school.

The weird thing is that my old flute buddy Jake died earlier this year, in March. It took me a while after waking up to remember that it wasn't a friend of his who had killed himself. I really enjoyed seeing him again, even if it was in a dream. He was a good guy.

Eyebrows, Guns, and the art of being intertwined.

I brought Red Leader to some kind of extended family thing to meet everyone. It included my dad's whole side of the family with the exception of my cousins Beksahn and Megan, my maternal grandparents, and my mom's brother, Uncle Bob.

All of my dream cousins were completely psycho and some of them were not real. For example; there was this trio of pyromaniac cousins, my cousin Gil being the only one that I knew among them, who I'm pretty sure were trying to kill me with a Bunsen Burner and some fireworks. There was an evil version of Tom Hanks who was a cousin too, he tried to cut off my left eyebrow with a knife to prove that I was a man. He was being crazy and cutting facial hair off of my other cousins to try and prove their gender, because everybody knows that only a man can get his left eyebrow sliced off. Anyway he was being pretty scary and at one point I put my foot down, resisted his threats, (called his bluff) and brought my younger cousins downstairs so they’d be safe. We had a discussion in our office with my parents and Aunt Janet who was sitting in the blue rocking chair about how Tom Hanks’ violence was becoming a real issue for the family.

After that fiasco we had a family dinner. We were eating something like salad and chicken, and they didn't really have a vegetarian option for me. (Vegetarian Problems.) I was sitting to the right of my Uncle Bob and somewhere to my left was my grandpa. I believe we were at my G'ma Leta's dinner table, I was facing the giant wall of windows. Partway through the meal I noticed that there were the words "Fuck You" carved into the side of one of the wooden bowls holding salad, which I pointed out to my parents, except it was "Fuck You," and then a name that started with "D." So I asked my mom who the person with the name starting with "D" was and she said it wasn't a person, it was an underwater gun that was used in WWI. And then she used some metaphor to describe what people turn into when this underwater gun shoots them, it was some very graphic food metaphor like "salsa" or something equally chunky, red, and liquified. Her metaphor was in Zoe from Firefly's voice, kind of like when Zoe was describing why she and Mal both sliced their apples. I kind of gnawed on a crouton for a little while after that and then left the table before the meal was over with Red Leader in tow.

We went up some wooden stairs and passed a girl who apparently goes to college with Red Leader (because we were suddenly in a hallway of dorms) and he had previously talked about how awful she was, (and had referred to her as a "despicable cunt," a phrase he reserves for the few women he can't stand) and I was like, "Hey, is that the despicable cunt?" And he said, yeah. She's a huge dick to everyone. And I asked him what specifically does she do to you, and he said that whenever she's walking behind him or he walks into a room, she sarcastically yells loud sexual innuendos to imply that he's obviously gay and she's being ironic. (Like "OH HOT DAMN, HOPE YOU BROUGHT A CONDOM" or "UH-OH, IT’S MY MAAAAN.” or shit like that in a sarcastic voice.)

I thought that was really funny and just endeared Red Leader to me more, so I hugged him very tightly for a long time and it was really vivid, we were just standing in a dorm hallway in front of a whiteboard that was in between a couple doorways and just hugging each other so tightly that every part of our bodies were touching and my arms felt like they were wrapped around him at least three times and I remember he was wearing his Green Lantern shirt because when I opened my eyes, my face was buried in his neck and I could see the light green collar against his skin.

Then I drew a cartoon of Tom Hanks cutting off my eyebrow on the whiteboard and shortly afterwards discovered that my awesome cousin Beksahn (pictured here being awesome) was in the bedroom right in front of us, lying on his stomach on a double bed, reading. I ran in and jumped on top of him (I do that sort of thing with him) and he groaned and laughed and swatted me because that's what we do. Then I looked at the book he was reading and about 1/3 of it was Chinese symbols (he speaks Chinese) and the rest was in English - the English was the normal text and the Chinese was the dialogue. At first I saw the name "Harry" and a few other familiar phrases and thought he was reading Harry Potter in Chinese. But then I saw a few Lord of the Rings references and got confused, and finally decided that it was some random book that I had never read before.

I remembered that Red Leader was still standing in the hallway and I called him over to meet Beksahn and get up onto the bed with us to talk, but unfortunately the dream ended shortly after so I have no clue what we talked about. Whatever it was, it was interesting and hilarious because the three of us were involved.




At the very tail end of the dream, I was getting changed for work in my high school friend Miles’ house, and the bathroom door did not lock. (One of my least favorite situations in the world.) I was trying to put on this v-neck soccer-jersey-looking long-sleeve shirt that was black and orange, and directly over the breast pocket had the word "PUBES" written in bright orange. I never managed to successfully dress myself in the "PUBES" shirt, but at one point I had six or seven layers of clothing on my body and Miles walked in and commented on how big my clothing was. I guess it was supposed to be a compliment.

Cool. Cool, cool, cool.

My dream last night featured the cast of Community. The real question here: Sad or Meta?

I distinctly remember seeing every character from the study group except for Shirley. Which I'm pretty okay with, she isn't my favorite. Also check out this crazy awesome fan art that I found on Google images.

So I was kind of just thrown into this ridiculous adventure with almost no introduction or explanation, but as events unfolded I began to grasp the concept of what was going on.

The cast of community were all just hanging out and being normal, little did they know that their lives were actually being used to power the earth, Matrix-style. Since my dreams tend not to be as well-thought-out as the Matrix, there were two of each character - one who lived and functioned normally, and one that was kept in a facility that drew out it's life energy over time and used it to power everyday things, specifically to my dream, a zoo. (Do zoos need that much electricity? Probably. I've never worked at one, how can I judge.)

While in The Matrix, there is only one physical body and the mind lives in the Matrix, in my dream there were two physical bodies, as previously mentioned. The dream was taking place in a sort of split-screen, jumping back and forth to following the real study group and following the drugged-looking-crusty-zombie versions of the characters, who were in the middle of attempting an escape from the power facility.

They were not doing very well. Crusty Abed, Pierce, and Troy had a plan to paint human-colored makeup over their weird yellow-y faces to try and pass for normal and walk out of the facility casually.

Abed was really unconvincing, Troy painted his face bright blue, and they did a bit where Chevy Chase actually looked more lively as a crusty zombie than as a normal human.

The way they finally ended up escaping was that the normal study group realized that their crusty yellow counterparts were attempting an escape. With some prompting from Abed, they decided to intervene. Abed and Britta got jobs at the power facility pretended they were helping the people who worked there re-capture the loose Crusties. As Abed ran through the main gate in (supposed pursuit) of a Crusty, he unlatched and then re-latched the gate, although what the audience (me) and Abed both knew was that Abed had only pretended to re-latch the gate. It stayed cracked a millimeter or two.

The Crusties didn't have much time, and they began trying to escape. It was going well until Jeff and Annie began to freeze, legitimate icicles began forming on them, and they spent the rest of the dream, (which wasn't much) falling over each other and trying to ram their stiff, frozen bodies through the gate to freedom.


ALSO


Throughout the entire dream, I had "The Most Wonderful Thing About Tiggers" stuck in my head. (Probably because last time I was at Red Leader's house, he sang it while going down the stairs and it was probably the cutest thing I've ever seen.)


Anyway,

Six seasons and a movie!

Eternal Wandering of the Unconscious Mind

The dream opened on myself and a young, bald guy sitting in chairs next to each other, across from what was very obviously some sort of shrink or psychiatrist. The bald guy looked like his head had been colored in with pencil. The therapist was talking about how the memory wipe that was apparently being performed on the young man was nearly complete. I recalled that the memory wipe was to erase the recollection of the tragic death of our mother and sister - this guy was apparently my brother. Also, I knew that I had already had the procedure done as I could neither conjure up an image of the mother and sister or their untimely deaths.

It seemed that after having the memory wipe done on myself, I was suddenly adamantly against my brother having the procedure finished. I barely had a chance to express my opinion before, apparently, the wipe was complete.

We sat there for a couple more minutes, me stewing in my defeat, my brother staring off into space with a general look of confusion, and the therapist being annoying and therapist-y, until without warning, my brother suddenly freaked the hell out.

Something had gone wrong with the memory wipe and all of the gruesome/painful memories had come crashing back into his head at once. He leaped to his feet and in a fit of crazed emotion, sprinted out of the room.

I followed him outside, where it was in the depths of winter. My brother was decked out in skiing garb and skis and holding ski poles in his hands. As soon as I got a good look at the situation, he turned and took off down a snowy, sparsely wooded hill. I took off after him on my own set of skis.

We shot down the hill and I managed to overtake him with the intention of stopping both of us so I could reason with him or at least calm him down. However, we found ourselves skidding across a frozen lake at the bottom of the hill instead. I was keeping my balance out of pure luck, and I even thought for a moment that I might make it across the lake in one piece.

Of course, that would be far too boring.

As I sped across the ice, I looked up and saw, directly in front of me, a polar bear. Out of self-preservation more than anything, I swerved as hard as I could to the right and my skis cut into the ice and created a hole in the lake. I just managed to maintain enough momentum to keep from falling into the hole. Unfortunately, my brother was still right behind me, and I turned around just in time to see him drop into the freezing lake in a spray of ice and snow.

I threw down my ski poles reflexively and began grasping for my brother's hands to rescue him. As we tried to reach out to each other, we both began freezing into giant, immobile blocks of rock and ice. My hand became a giant, frozen chunk of ice, and I could barely move. My brother was slowly being encased in a thick layer of ice too, and I could see his lips moving - he was speaking to me as he froze and sank into the water. I strained desperately with every muscle in my body to reach his giant chunk-of-ice-hand, but all I could do was watch helplessly while he moved slower and slower until he stopped moving altogether. Shortly after that, I lost consciousness.

When I woke up, my ice had melted and I was completely alone, leaning against a stone wall. Neither the lake nor my brother's body were anywhere in sight. I was a disgusting, bloody mess, very aware that I was seriously injured but running on enough adrenaline and shock that the pain hadn't hit me yet.

I looked down and saw that I was in a hot pink pantsuit and I was holding a trumpet. In a weird sort of hazy delirium, I took the trumpet and ran down the nearest street until I stumbled across a jazz club. I burst inside and invited myself up onto the stage with the combo that was playing and took the opportunity to play a long, squealing, ridiculous trumpet solo, at the end of which everyone just kind of stared at me with their mouths hanging open. Not quite sure if their shock was a horrified shock or an impressed shock, I didn't wait around to find out but instead ran back out of the club.

That's when I woke up.


Also, side note, only because I mentioned it in the last post, Red Leader has been rescued from the Empire's clutches. Long live the Rebel Alliance.

Unfortunate Hernia Premonition

The night before last I had this horrible dream. Red Leader and I had had a tense moment before I went to bed and he was acting strangely.

In the dream, I was being prepped for my upcoming hernia surgery and Red Leader was the surgical intern who was scrubbing in with Dr. Schroeder. He was acting weird in the dream, too, and I was really concerned. I kept asking him what was wrong and he kept saying it "wasn't a good time to talk about it," which was pretty true because I was lying on an operating table. But I couldn't take the suspense and I finally demanded him to tell me what was going on. Just as I was losing consciousness, he leaned over and told me that he was breaking up with me.

I spent the rest of the dream watching Dr. Schroeder cut through layers of my forearm for no apparent reason, since my hernia is inguinal.

Regardless of Red Leader's not-so-reassuring reassurance that he was "not going to break up with me right before my hernia surgery," his x-wing was unfortunately shot down by an imperial star destroyer roughly 12 hours after the premonition. That's all I'd like to say about the matter.

Red Leader makes a second appearance.

This dream began with several people, including my friend Andrew whom I haven't seen in a very long time, walking in on me while I was in the bath. Fortunately for me, I was also wearing underwear whilst in the bath. Unfortunately for me, both articles of underwear were white so they were pretty much pointless.

Andrew and my other friends (including Anna, I believe) all waved amicably and didn't seem too uncomfortable about me being wet and mostly nude. While the interruption was rather surprising, I decided to go with it and got out of the tub, put on clothes, and started hanging out with the bathroom intruders.

What started out as three or four friends quickly escalated into a full-blown party, which then eventually changed venues to somewhere far cooler than my house - some sort of party venue that from what I could see at this point included a couch/sitting area with weird decorations and a small roller coaster that went around the whole place and pretty much defied the laws of physics the entire way.

Once we made the transition from my house to the party venue, I wandered over to the sitting area and engaged in conversation with a random chick I went to high school with (and talked to about twice total) named Portia. Not only was I never even acquaintances with Portia in high school, at first glance I would not choose to talk to her. (She's one of those women who take five hours to "put on their face" every morning. I would personally go for the most interesting looking person in the area.) Nevertheless, we ended up in close proximity as I was watching the decorations around the couch. Credit to Books of Adam (www.booksofadam.com) for the Facebook Girls cartoon.

The decorations were a bunch of random shit hanging from the ceiling, including some tiki heads and a Buddha-looking guy and other things you might find at a flea market. Then there were these colored disco lights shining on the hanging things and they were moving around like a mobile.

I said something like, "This would be so cool to look at when you're high." Which is what got Portia's attention, and she said something about the best place to get good weed nearby, to which I just nodded and pretended I knew what the hell she was talking about because let's be honest here, I've never even seen weed.

After that completely faked conversation (on my end, at least) I ventured over to the roller-coaster and got on. The cars looked like wooden park benches. The ride started and, though very confusing, was disappointingly tame. Apparently Portia had followed me on because I once again began talking to her about pot, stating that all I really want to do is spike someone's food with it and watch the hilarious aftermath.

The strange part here is that I then turned around to see Red Leader* in the seat behind me, and he told me that in retaliation to my marijuana-food-spiking, he would "slip a tiny ring into my food so that someday when I have his child, it will be born wearing a monocle."

I'm not making this up. It was so specific.

Then I answered with something really extreme and graphic like, "I think I'd shoot myself in the stomach" (I have that aversion to pregnancy) and then went on to continue digging a hole of crazy for myself by pondering the effectiveness of stomach-shooting as a form of suicide, which turned into contemplating suicide aloud which is generally frowned upon, although Dream Grace DID make a good point in that shooting yourself in the stomach a) Could end up not killing you and b) Would be very messy either way.

Then we all got off the ride and went to play laser tag. But I woke up before we got there, which was disappointing because I really wanted to play laser tag.

Anyway, moral of the story, my sub-conscious dealt with so very many issues last night including (but not limited to) my own naked body, illegal drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, insecurities about a new relationship, suicide-slash-contemplating-suicide, and along with that, the shame associated with admitting that I struggle with those things. All in all a busy night for my brain.

*Red Leader is the previously mentioned love interest with whom I was not sure things were going to work out, but they actually turned out great and I'm pretty damn happy. I mentioned the boyfriend-blog-nickname-dilemma to him and since we're both die-hard Star Wars nerds and he likes to pretend his car is an x-wing, he dubbed himself Red Leader, which is way better than anything I would have come up with.

I'm not good at discretion.

I'm sorry if this is blatantly weird.

There's this dude who's coming over to hang out with me soon. And I had a ridiculous dream the other night, with one short little cameo from him that was incredible. I don't really have time to post the whole dream at this point, but I wanted to post this part in case things don't work out, because I would probably be too pissy and self-involved to put it up if that should happen.

Also I can't think of a good nickname for this guy. Everything I come up with sounds like an idiotic code-name that 14-year-old Grace would make up with her friends so she could giggle about her crush without him realizing. So I'm just going to use vague pronouns for now.

I was walking along the street that my subdivision branches off of on one side and that my work branches off of on the other side, on the stretch of sidewalk against the field behind my house. I looked ahead of me and saw a guy with brown hair wearing cargo shorts walking in front of me, and recognized him as the previously mentioned boy.

On an impulse, I ran up behind him and jumped onto his back, wrapping my arms and legs around him like a monkey. He knew it was me and laughed and spun me around a couple times, then flipped me around so I was in the same position on his front-side. (Don't really understand the mechanics of that. Whatever.)

I took his face in my hands and kissed him really slowly, open-mouthed with a little lip-grabbing action. Just one kiss, and a really intense slow pull-away. Then I leaned in again, but hesitated right before our lips touched and just let it build up, exhaling into his mouth softly. That kind of electricity makes me go crazy.

I woke up before the second kiss was ever completed. If I was a dude I'd have had a nice sweatpants-tent going on.

The end.

KIDNAPPED BY DANGER

30 Rock? Anyone? Anyone? Okay, fine.

Well, the dream started out in the best way possible, I was kidnapped by Hitler. (There were several hilarious and very offensive Hitler jokes I could have posted here including a particularly vicious one about Mengele, but I wimped out. Or showed some wise restraint, depending on your point of view.)

I've actually had several dreams with Hitler in them before, i.e. Nazis were searching for my family and I was hiding in my Grandma's bathroom, or the time that my French class was being sorted into groups for a concentration camp. Who can blame me? Hitler's scary as hell.

Anyway, there was no fear-filled pursuit in this dream, I had just already been captured. Along with a group of random family and friends, none of whom I remember specifically, I was herded down a bunch of dark ramps to wherever we were being taken. The strangest part of the whole journey down ramps was that there were several Nazi guards along the way but they were all middle school boys. (They may or may not have been the Chang-Glorious Bastards. I tend to mesh life with television sometimes. JUST LIKE ABED ZOMG.)

I wasn't afraid at this point, I was actually being a huge idiot. I was exaggeratedly goose-stepping down the ramps and barking "HEIL HITLER" at each guard in a dopey voice while making a face and giving a very aggressive "Heil" gesture. At one point someone offered me ice cream and I declined. (Hey, it's my dream. Hitler can give out ice cream if I want him to.)

We finally ended up at the end of the whole ramp-maze, in a large room that was not particularly relevant to the plot at all. The function that the room served, however, was reminiscent of an American airport but with more of a Hitler-y feel to it, people were being searched to the extreme. We're talking random strip searches and unfortunately, the occasional full body cavity search.

Of course, since this was a dream and nudity was involved, I was going to end up nude and uncomfortable at some point. As I stood stoically in the line for searches, the old man in a suit that was going through my line grabbed a guy in front of me, who turned out to be The Todd from Scrubs, and said he was going to strip search him. I thought about how very lucky it was that the one dude who would probably be completely okay with being fully exposed in front of a ton of strangers was the one who had been randomly selected, I believe he may have high-fived either myself or the old man at some point. Since my sub-conscious apparently couldn't rationalize a better way to twist the situation so that I was the one in the nude, so I just magically replaced Todd as the poor bastard who had to strip down.

Once I was completely unclothed, I guess the old man still found me suspicious because he decided to do a cavity search. Just wait, this keeps getting more awkward.

I had to stand with my hands against a wall, pat-down style, and then the old man pulled out this hair-dryer-looking-thing and started shooting air all up in my cavities. Which I suppose is better than his hand/face. But there was a lot of... flapping around of body parts and everyone in line was watching. It was less of an embarrassing situation and more of a shaking-my-head-at-how-ridiculous-this-is-and-laughing-because-I've-stopped-caring.


Fortunately before I could discover the wonders of wherever Hitler was planning on keeping us, (I have an educated guess.) I found myself at a family gathering at my house.

Speaking of my house, it was really really cool in my dream. We had all these random added rooms that we don't actually have and they were painted strange colors and had little reading nooks and I believe there was a cool bathroom somewhere in there, too.

There were a couple brief snippets of something, I'm pretty sure one involved poop (but I did NOT shit myself in my sleep) but the first situation I remember clearly was my mom and I sitting in the living room. We were talking about how and when we should tell my dad's mom, G'ma Leta, that I have tattoos. (Not actually worried about that. At least my awake self isn't.) G'ma Leta is generally a cool lady who takes things in stride, so we weren't stressing out about it, just pondering. However, as we got onto the subject, I realized my mom's mom, G'ma Lois, was sitting behind us and had heard what we were talking about and was both confused and horrified. (She's the one who would get upset, not G'ma Leta.) She was flustered at first and asked me if I got "that awful scar on my arm" tattooed over. (I have a maybe quarter-sized scar on my right upper arm from getting a mole removed. It's not even noticable.) Regardless of how ridiculous that idea was, I seized the opportunity to stay written into her will and reassured her that yes, I had simply tattooed over my horrible scar.

After that exchange, I told my family that a new love interest was going to stop by and visit later, which was met by harsh criticism and judgement by Theresa, an LVT who works with me. I don't know why she was related to me in my dream, but I'm sure as hell glad she isn't in real life. When the love interest showed up, I think we did a pretty effective job of scaring him away, and at the end of the dream he turned into a black cat, who sat on my lap. I said something about him being a cat and my mom said something like, "Oh, thank god she finally realized he's a cat." As if the whole time I'd been hanging out with a cat and having some sort of psychotic episode that the cat was an attractive young man.

I'm going to be finding out shortly if the love interest is actually a cat or not. Fingers crossed.